1984 Record Sale FlyerOn a rainy spring morning in 1984, over 800 visitors swarmed the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and purchased over 20,000 78s and LPs at the first Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound Duplicate Record Sale. The event raised $14,750 to support the activities of the archive, which began collecting recordings of all types as far back as 1930. Perhaps more importantly, the sale realized space critical to expand the archive, an archive which has since grown to become one of the world's largest, rarest, and most

Daft Punk Random Access Memories
Random Access Memories, the fourth proper studio album from Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo delivers a mix of disco, soft rock, prog-pop, Broadway-style pop and of course, their stadium-dance sound. The series of songs takes the listener on a cohesive trip through different decades with an extreme attention to detail.

Until relatively recent decades, women have had severely limited opportunities within Western art music especially composition. Unfortunately women were often encouraged as amateurs but not professionals. Historically, there have been many obstacles facing woman as professional performers and composers.

The first dates all the way back to the beginning of the fourth century, in keeping with the Pauline injuction, Mulier in ecclesia taceat, which translates to "Let women keep silence in church." Women could and did make music in their own separate convents,

Musical theater is an exceptionally collaborative art form, and finding the right collaborator can be as complicated as dating. Although New York City is filled with hopeful musical theater writers and composers, it is also, as Sondheim's Marta sings in Company, "a city of strangers" where making connections of any kind can be difficult.

However, part of the mission of the New York Public Library is to "strengthen our communities," and so today I am pleased to announce Across A Crowded Room a summer project that I hope will strengthen the

Seymour Chwast, The Pushpin Group. 2013. Make Music New York.Make Music New York is a live, free musical celebration on June 21, the longest day of the year. From 10 in the morning to 10 at night, public spaces throughout the five boroughs become impromptu musical stages, dance floors, and social meeting points.

MMNY is in its seventh year and is based on France’s Fête de la Musique, a national musical holiday inaugurated in 1982. Ever since, the festival has

"If we had said 'Negro power' nobody would get scared. Everybody would support it. If we said power for colored people, everybody would be for that, but it is the word 'black' that bothers people in this country, and that's their problem, not mine." —Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) at UC Berkeley, 1966

Stokely Carmichael by Lynn B. PadweBlack Rio Scene by Almir VeigaJames Brown released "I'm Black and I'm Proud" during the height of the Black Power Movement in the United States in 1968. Brown's in-your-face approach to racial pride resonated

by Bob Kosovsky, Library for the Performing Arts, Music DivisionApril 12, 2013

Consider this a late contribution to this year's Womens' History Month.

When most people think of the involvement of women in music they probably think of performers or composers. To be sure, women performers have been at the forefront of music for centuries, and in recent years awareness of women composers has grown enormously, particularly with those from the twentieth century. But there is at least one other music-related field in which women have made a significant mark: publishing.

Between the seventeen-century to the middle of the nineteenth-century,

Last year I wrote a popular blog post entitled "OMG! I Love That Song!: A Guilty Pleasure Playlist" where I confessed my song shame only to find out that many of you shared the exact same musical taste. Than this past February, several of my choices also ended up winning Grammys. I should have named that blog "A Not-so-Guilty Pleasure Playlist" instead. This year this post is once again a "no judgment zone" and I am declaring my love for the songs that I have on constant

I am looking at Monet's Weeping Willow series and want to describe these works to people who cannot see. I think music, with its sensual and dramatic language will most elegantly convey the power of these works.

In 1791, Mozart composed in Vienna parts of what is now known as the Requiem Mass in D Minor (K. 626).

by Kenneth Johnson, Science, Industry and Business LibraryMarch 25, 2013

Today I'm going to write about trade shows. I'm going to use as an example the recent trade show/exhibition for the violin (really, string instrument) trade, MondoMusica New York 2013.

What are Trade Shows? The name says it all. Businesses and businesspeople getting together at an event organized for the chance to network, display their wares, buy and sell — to each other and, possibly, the public.

How do you find out about trade shows? Good sources would be Trade Journals and Directories. Some directory titles:

Do you have a gently-used iPod that you'd like to donate to a good cause? Because the Kingsbridge Library's Teen Advisory Group is going to be collecting used iPods on behalf of the Music & Memory program.

Music & Memory is an organization that uses iPods to create personalized playlists for the elderly and infirm, helping to improve their quality of life. You can learn more about how this program works at the Music & Memory website, where you can see videos that show how

by Bob Kosovsky, Library for the Performing Arts, Music DivisionFebruary 28, 2013

Piano pedagogue Rosina Lhevinne with her student, Van CliburnMany of us were saddened to hear of the passing of Van Cliburn on Wednesday, February 27. A pianist who excelled in music of the romantic repertoire, Cliburn rocketed to fame when he won the International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, held in Moscow in 1958 at the height of the cold war. Upon his return, he was not just a

The Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the New York Library for the Performing Arts currently houses a collection of more than 3,000 wax and celluloid cylinders. These cylinders range from very early, non-commercial, white and brown wax cylinders, to commercial moulded black wax cylinders, to Indestructible moulded celluloid cylinders and, finally, to the later Edison Blue Amberol celluloid cylinders.

I play the piano a little bit and am working on AS's Six Little Pieces, op. 19. Little they are — all six take less than five minutes to play. Easy they are not — the slightest error in nuance ruins them. Written in 1911, they are among his 'atonal' works, a vague term but basically describing those works in which the usual major/minor tonalities were avoided. I don't quite know why so many people have an aversion to this music, and its successor, serial